Green Man Gaming announces plans to float on AIM, part of the London Stock Exchange

Green Man Gaming has announced today its intention to float the business on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), which is part of the London Stock Exchange. Green Man Gaming has reportedly been valued at £100 million. The IPO is expected to take place late September.

Green Man Gaming is a global pure play e-commerce and technology business in the video games industry, which also has made moves into publishing, starting a blog, a team of streamers, a newsroom, and a Green Man Gaming community. The Green Man Gaming digital shop currently works across several different DRM platforms and gaming platforms, and has expanded to reach 195 countries covering 16 different currencies and has localised the website into 4 different languages.

Green Man Gaming has seen rapid growth with 25 to 30 percent growth year-on-year since its inception with revenue growing from £16.2 million in 2014 to £47.5 million in 2017. The company is positioned as a growth company, with an EBITDA margin of 3% in the medium term. The firm foresees that this rapid growth will continue in upcoming years.

Speaking of the intent to raise funds to further growth, CEO and Founder Paul Sulyok had this to say: “We have received tremendous support over the last eight years from our business partners and customers and our achievements are built on the relentless hard work and professionalism of our team. We believe that our award winning pure play e-commerce technology which we have developed is well positioned in our market, which the Directors believe to be worth £30.4 billion1. We see a huge opportunity for an agile, data-driven company like Green Man Gaming on the public markets, enhancing our ability to offer customers and business partners a leading edge ecosystem for the next generation of gamers.

With a truly global proposition, the Directors believe that Green Man Gaming’s current position in the market, combined with access to the capital markets, could lead to a significant opportunity for the Company. Admission to AIM could enable us to drive our global marketing initiatives more aggressively, both from a brand and performance perspective, develop our underserved international markets, which we believe have considerable potential, and consolidate our position in the video games ecosystem with potential future acquisitions. We believe the future of the digital entertainment industry will be driven by access to global gamers and great engaging content and we are ready to drive the ecosystem.”

News of Green Man Gaming’s intent to go public comes after recent moves by Codemasters, Team 17, and Sumo Digital. “I stand on the shoulders of giants,” Paul Sulyok said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, “I’ve had tremendous support from other people in the industry who have gone through this journey already.”

Regarding the future and the plans that the IPO will fund, Paul Sulyok said: “We aim to internationalise ourselves properly, we aim to expand into markets where we don’t currently have all the payment systems, or language or local operational and customer support. And then we will double down and market into those regions from some of the primary proceeds that we are raising.”

“And then obviously, we firmly believe in this market and our strategy, and we will also be looking for other companies that will bring something to the Green Man Gaming ecosystem. That could be technology, it could be content, it could be market reach… and then we’ll be looking to bring them into the fold from an M&A perspective.”

Alex "Theoban" McHugh is a massive RPG and classic gaming fan, recently though he's become consumed by The Elder Scrolls Online. He's also a devoted Warhammer 40k player, hoping to take his beloved Word Bearers to victory. At least, once would be nice. Follow Alex on Green Man Gaming here.